Paladin PvP guide
Rogue A rogue will generally not take you head-on. Unless they have epic gear, a rogue that attacks while a paladin has full health + mana = a dead rogue. If you see a rogue from far away suddenly dissapear, use perception. If you can, jam the hammer of justice button while they come in. You should be able to stun them before they get off the cheap shot. You may want to save it for healing later though, as a rogue will always try to interrupt your heals. Be sure to Purify any poisons the rogue may use. If you go far enough into the protection tree (Although very few do after 1.9) and get Reckoning, the rogue is dead. Period. An extra 400-500 damage each crit? A rogue tries to crit every third or fourth attack. Thats basically doubling your attack rate. Another option (useful especially for flag-guarding) is to use consecration to detect the rogue. The damage will take him out of his stealth, and prevent the all annoying backstab/ambush. Warrior 1v1, with about equal gear and skill level, a paladin will beat a warrior. All one has to do is outlast the warrior. Try to pull off a fake heal at around 60% or so. In the worst case scenario, the warrior will not intercept and you\'ll begin again at full health. All you have to do is outlast the warrior. You have a mana pool, use it. Although not as useful against warriors, reckoning is still a pretty usable skill. The biggest danger a Warrior poses is Mortal Strike (if their talents permit). -50% to healing effects can doom you if you let them get it at the wrong time. Trying a fake heal early can lure it out of them. Start casting again when the time remaining on the Mortal Strike debuff is less than your casting time. This ensures they can't renew it. If desperate, either bubble will remove it. Priest A shadow priest is a very formidable character in all PvP situations. S/he will cast several DoT's and then fear you. There are several trinkets to prevent fear. These will usually decide if you can win or not. Holy priests are about average with paladins. Just try to outlast them. And hope they don't use mana-burn. Your rank two PvP trinket is crucial to break the first fear. If the priest is manaburning you, start healing, casting and casting heals. The idea is to use your mana in a beneficial manner before they burn it. Judgement and Seal of Wisdom on the Priest will help a lot. Shadow Resistance Aura is the best one to use, as the most pesky of their abilities are from the Shadow school. Hope that you've got the Unyielding Faith talent for the 10% chance to resist fear. If it works, the priest is in trouble. This is going to be a long fight. Warlock Use your trinket to break fear, and use the shield to break the second fear, and you should be able to get close enough to stay in range and stun / kill the warlock. If s/he has an imp out, kill it first. 3 blows should do it. Beware the felhunter, its spell lock ability is one of the most annoying ones in the game. (It takes out a school of magic for 6 or 8 seconds depending on rank). Paladins only have one school of magic (holy). If, by completely random curcumstances, they summon a inferno or doomguard, shieldhearth (make sure to /farewell) and know that after Enslave Demon runs out, it'll attack the warlock instead (lolz). Be warned, a common tactic of warlocks and shadow priests is to cast a ton of DoTs and fear you, letting your health tick away. Heal only when the warlock is stunned or if you know the fear is on a cooldown. A very difficult fight though. Mage Outlast him. A mage with no mana is a dead mage. Pray that he doesn't crit a lot, although there's not much you can do to prevent it though. Just heal, heal, heal some more. Heal early, and beware the counterspell. If you can, cast Blessing of Freedom as mages are very good at getting away with Frost Armor, Nova, and Blink. Mages can keep you at a distance using a large variety of chill and freeze effects as well as the ever annoying polymorph. Use your trinket to escape the sheeping if you can and don't let them get far. If you stay at a distance the mage will blast you into bits and pieces. Protect yourself as much as you can until he runs out of mana. Then destroy him. If you are in melee range early in the battle, you may want to cast seal of justice instead of the usual crusader/command or whatever you use. While many people say it isn't viable for PvP, I find it useful just as a spell interrupt. It procs fairly often, anyways... Retribution paladins have an extra tool for this fight in the form of Eye for an Eye. Returning 30% of their spell criticals to them will cook a mage fast. Your most profitable aura in this fight is most likely Frost Resistance. Frost spells are what they use to kite you the most, and around 50% of mages are frost talented anyways, aiming for the shatter effect (50% increased chance to crit). Try and figure out what kind of mage you'ere fighting. If you can be certain he's a fire mage, feel free to put up fire resistance. Druid Much like paladin vs paladin, this is a very long fight. Try to outlast him via mana. He may try to root you in order to heal, which you can blessing of freedom out of. If he's feral, you'll have a pretty easy time. When he comes out to heal, stun him a little after the heal starts. If you have it, repentance works great at interrupting heals. So do grenades. As a feral druid rarely comes out until under 30-50% health, you may have an easy time winning. Hunter Hunters are well known as currently (1.9) being one of the most annoying PvP classes out there. Their ability to kite (keeping you at long range constantly and firing on you) is very, very annoying. Blessing of Freedom all the time (The 3rd tier protection talent is a must here) to avoid Wing Clips. CLEANSE THE STINGS! A hunter will waste more mana casting a sting than your mana spent cleansing it. Otherwise, just keep attacking, and hope for the best. Another way to approach this battle is head on, and it's scary for the hunter. We can guess that the first thing he'll do is Freeze trap, if you step in that, you'll give him an open invitation for an Aimed Shot or Viper sting, but whats worse you'll give him the opportunity for distance, which means kiting - that's the last thing any class wants when fighting a hunter. So, as soon as the battle starts, duel or otherwise, you want to Shield yourself (the sooner the better) and head towards him. He won't be ready for this, and most hunters will have a whole lot of their combat strategy go right down the tubes. They will waste their wingclip, out of habit (90% of them will), their concussion shot, Freeze trap, scatter shot, and probably viper sting. In otherwords, when you approach them, take your time-to a certain extent. You want to be close enough so that when your shield goes down you can hit them with you Hammer of Justice, but you don't want to get there too quick, let him spend some mana and get some cool downs going-time it so that by the end of your shield-he's locked in melee with you. (He knows your shield up, but most hunters will still use their good shots out of habit--or perhaps panic, the force of habit is one you can count on with most hunters, trust me on this). If he's still running around, while your shield is up, and your having trouble catching up, don't do anything until your shield is down, when it's down Repentance, or Holy Shock will stun him if he has his aspect of cheetah on, don't forget to cleanse-just in case. Now, when your shield goes down-it's your turn, now it's Hammer of Justice time wack away-and stay close (I use Crusader->judgement->Seal of Command...But feel free to use your seal of justice, that can work nicely as well). Go ahead and put on your Blessing of Freedom-now that you are close, and you'll be able keep it that way, you really should be able to finish the job most of the time, in this manner with no healing. If he manages to wing clip you while you in cool-down with Freedom-he should be close enough to dead to Hammer of Wrath him at this point, especially if you''ve had a couple of lucky procs. Paladin This battle will be the longest battle you have ever fought. Unless you somehow manage to get one who has all shields on cooldown, Lay on Hands on cooldown, the stun on cooldown, and no mana. Even then it'll still be a long battle. Considering this would only be in a duel situation, don't waste anything, such as a lay on hands or anything with limited numbers or a long cooldown. Groan-fests -- err, Paladin vs. Paladin fights on the battlefield will become a reality when the expansion is released with the advent of Blood Elf Paladins. With the frequency of these matches increasing, more strategies may be developed in order to cut down the duration and keep going on with the battle. Shaman Pull off a fake heal early, and the shaman will waste an earthshock. Then, pull a Holy Light. Be warned. Earthshock is on a 6 second cooldown. Taking out totems is helpful, especially if they have activation times. Destroying the totem before it starts to work means that the Shaman just wasted a bunch of mana. Shamans can do insane DPS, but they have a very small mana pool. Outlast them, and you can take the win. Be sure to rebuff as they will purge a lot. If you catch a shaman who will purge ANYTHING, use a rank one seal or blessing (the cheaper the better). All ranks look the same and the shaman has no way of telling what rank is what. The more mana wasted on purge is less mana for damaging you. Also, having Righteous Fury on during the battle may help protect you from the first purge. This is because Purge removes two 'magic' effects at random, and Righteous Fury is counted as such. This only works once in the battle however, due to Righteous Fury's expensive mana cost. The real trick is to seize the initiative in the fight (I.E. the shaman responding to your moves, not you responding to theirs.) Also remember that the Shaman can only be chain-casting one shock at a time. If he/she just smashed you with a Frost Shock, they can't Earth Shock you, and vice-versa. Charging at the Shaman will most likely make him or her cast Frost Shock. Keep forging ahead until the Shaman fires off a second Frost Shock. This is the ideal moment to heal. If for some reason the Shaman withholds the second shock, try and heal then. They will most likely have been saving Earth Shock for this. After the Holy School cooldown is over, use Divine Favor + Flash of Light. (You most likely don't have time to complete Holy Light. Divine Favor can be instrumental to victory as it allows you to cram in more healing (at a near-infinite mana effeciency) in less time. Category:Paladins Category:Tactics Category:PvP